The Lone Ranger

Yeh, it's about an hour too long. Yeh, Johnny Depp is goofy as Tonto but this one never stops moving. The music is overdone as are the dust effects but that is what you expect from an old school 'duster' and this movie is hardcore old school western. The bad guys are really bad and the good guys are really good. This is the kind of crap that Disney should make every summer. It's John Carter in the Old West and you will either love it or hate it. No one will be on the fence about The Lone Ranger.

Huge vistas and dramatic views of  a West that no longer exists, if they ever did at all. I like a lot of the mythmaking going on. I also liked watching Ruth Wilson (Luther) who can't be in enough movies for my liking. Put her in a prairie dress and you had me at 'howdy ma'am'. She is no damsel in distress that needs saving.

Armie Hammer is quite good as the Lone Ranger in a role that really any Hollywood pretty boy could have taken on. It's a thankless task to try to recreate a pop culture legend. You can only fail but I thought that Hammer had the perfect earnestness to play the hero that we all wanted to see.

 

Even Barry Pepper hiding inside another character (this time a Custer like Soldier) is game to play his evil role to the hilt. He, along with evil railroad baron Tom Wilkinson and murderous psychopath Butch Cavendish round out a solid trio of standard western movie bad guys.

The relationship between Depp and Silver is a nice touch. I wish I had seen more of it. Only a truly special horse could carry the justice of the Ranger and all the scenes with Silver were golden. The set pieces are huge and spectacular and the comedy is broad when it needs to be. They went full retard on the concept and I think reaped huge rewards. This one was a hoot from beginning to end.

 

Johnny Depp has collected all his eccentricities and acting ticks and poured it into his Tonto. Usually it gets annoying but this time, like with Jack Sparrow, Depp finds the balance that seemed to elude him as the Mad Hatter or Barnabas Collins. This Tonto sees the Ranger as a means to satisfying his quest to hunt down the Wendigo  (Butch Cavendish), the man that killed the Ranger's brother and ate his heart (I know, Disney ain't playing around) and he gets all the best lines and comic situations.

 

 

The movie has a dark edge to it. Aside from the cannibalism there are Indian raids, transvestites (don't ask), scorpions, bridge collapse, train explosions and murders aplenty. Too many frightening scenes for the younger ones and I know that because several scenes made me jump and worry like I didn't need to.

 

 

People have complained about the length but I found that once I was in this world that I was in no rush to leave. There were just too many moving parts coming together that I had to see how everything came out in the end. In that way this movie is very much like Pirates of the Caribbean, which was conveniently made by the same people who made The Lone Ranger.

 

 

I thought about this movie for hours after I watched it. It was more brutal than it needed to be but it was entertaining nonetheless. The everything AND the kitchen sink approached worked for me.